(Introduction to) Seven Essays on Documentary Films About Art, 1949–52

These essays, originally published in French between 1949 and 1952, represent André Bazin’s responses to recent documentary films about art by directors including Luciano Emmer and Alain Resnais. The essays describe Bazin’s claims about the importance of the form and his arguments concerning their distinctive treatment of space. Overall, Bazin argues that a “new esthetic entity” is born from the “synthesis” of film with painting, which he compares to a “chemical reaction” producing a new “alloy.” This, he proposes, offers new possibilities for the understanding of cinematic “realism.”